Top 10 College Women 2014: Susannah Benjamin

It was the perfect gift in retrospect, but when Benjamin's mother gave her a Kodak point-and-shoot as a Christmas present, "I just shrugged," she says.
A few years later, as a student at an all-girls' school, she was inspired to use a camera to tackle issues she saw classmates struggling with—bullying, body image, and peer pressure. She landed an internship with a top agent, who signed on to represent her professionally after being wowed by her portfolio; when Beyoncé herself saw Benjamin's work, she hired her to shoot part of her 2011 world tour. Today this phenom has over 3 million views on her Flickr photo stream, and her images have appeared on book covers and won top honors in a major competition. In photography "you're not just recording reality," Benjamin says. "You can change it."